Want to speed up your flash video watching? By default, Firefox takes a sort of “snapshot” of whatever you are doing every ten seconds. Why? It is so that the browser can restore itself, just in case of a crash. Now you might ask, what does this have to do with flash videos? Well, the snapshot action is what is causing your ten second delay, at times, with watching flash videos on the Web.

The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you’ll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don’t have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.

I gave it a shot, and it might not be a life changing experiance after doing so, but it does seem to make the videos play faster, especially if you have several Firefox tabs or windows open at the same time.

2- اكتب ..cd واضغط enter ثم اكتب ..cd واضغط enter

3- اكتب cd windows ثم اكتب  .. واضغط انتر cd system32 واضغط انتر

4- اكتب setup واضغط انتر

اذا جت رسالة بهذا الشكل …. رجاء الإنتقال إلي لوحة التحكم لتثبيت مكوناتها ونظم تكوينها

فأعلم ان جهازك خال من الفيروسات ، وان لم تاتي هذه الرسالة فجهازك به فيروسات

————————————————————-

setup الموجود داخل الsystem32 الفكرة : ان ملف ال

يكون مغلق عندما يكون جهازك به فيروس ويكون مفتوح عندما يكون جهازك غير مصاب

system.exe لأن معظم الفيروسات تغلق جميع امتدادت

هذا على وندوز اكس بي أما غيرها فالله أعلم

Adblock Plus

تضيف لك خيار فى قائمة الزر الايمن
لحجب اى صوره او عدة صور من اى صفحة !
كما تحتوى هذه الاضافة على اعدادات مميزه
مثل : حجب الصوره هذه فقط , ام حجب جميع الصور الاتيه من هذا الرابط ,
او حجب جميع الصور من السيرفر بالكامل

الثاني

Adblock Plus : Element Hiding Helper

بما ان الاضافة السابقة مختصه بالصور فقط
تأتي هذه الاضافة لتكمل عملها و تمكنك من حجب اى ملف فلاش
او حتى نص او فيديو من اى صفحة !!

الثالث
Extended Statusbar

كما موضح فى الصورة اعلاه من جهازي
ستضيف لك هذه الاضافة معلومات مهمه رائعه
فى شريط المعلومات السفلي مثل عدد الصور
فى الصفحة , الوقت المستغرق لفتح الصفحة ,
النسبة المئويه لفتح الصفحة , سرعة فتح الصفحة

الرابع

Lazarus Form Recovery

من اهم الاضافات التى انقذت حياتي
حيث تقوم هذه الاضافة بتسجيل كل شئ تقوم بكتابته فى اى مكان
فى المتصفح فى موضوع او رد او مشاركة او نموذج

وحينما تضغط على زر خاطئ ويُمسح كل شئ او يغلق المتصفح
او تعود للصفحة السابقه عن طريق الخطأ
و يمسح كل ما وضعته من صور وروابط وكلام فى موضوعك
او مشاركتك

ببساطة تستطيع اعادته بهذه الاضافة النادره التى لا يمكن استعادة
النص و الروابط و الصور الممسوحة الا بها !!

الخامس

New Tap Homepage

من اهم الاضافات الرائعه المهمه
فالافتراضي فى الفايرفوكس انه يفتح النوافذ الفرعية
فارغة اما بواسطة هذه الاداة فستفتح الصفحة الرئيسيه
مباشرة عند فتح اى نافذة فرعية !
مثلا انا وضع القوقل صحفة رئيسيه فكلما
افتح نافذة فرعية يفتح القوقل بدل ما كانت تفتح فارغة !

السادس
Sidebar Bookmark Selector

اضافة رائعه جداً ومهمه لكل مستخدم فايرفوكس على وجه الارض
ستجعل من مفضلة الفايرفوكس منظمة و أنيقة بحيث تخفي القسمين الغير مهمين
Bookmarks Toolbar و Unsorted Bookmarks
فتصبح المفضلة منتظمة و مرتبة مثل المتصفحات الاخرى !!

السابع
SkipScreen

إضافة لا استطيع التحميل بدونها
حيث تقوم بتجاوز العد التنازلي لمواقع التحميل !
بمعنى : لا انتظار بعد اليوم ل 15 موقع تحميل منها الرابيدشير وغيره الكثير !!!

الثامن
UnMHT

اضافة غاية فى الاهمية خاصة لمن يحفظ صفحات الانترنت بكثرة
فلو اعجبك موضوع او اى صفحة معينة تقدر تحفظها كملف واحد !
وليس كمجلد به صور و ملف الصفحة لوحده مثل ما يكون
فى الوضع الافتراضي عند الحفظ !

التاسع

WebMail Notifier

تضع فيها كل ايميلاتك او ايميل واحد
وستقوم بتفقد الايميل كل 5 دقائق او حسب ما تحدده انت
وعنده وجود ايميل جديد ستنبهك الاضافة
وتدعم الياهو و الهوتميل وغيرهما !

العاشر
WebMail Ad Blocker

اضافة مهمه جدا ستقوم بإخفاء ( حجب )
الاعلانات فى الياهو و الهوتميل و الجي ميل
وستبقى الصفحة نظيفه خاليه منها

الحادي عشر
Menu Editor

اضافة قمة فى الفائدة لاخفاء اي امر او اوامر
من اى قائمة من قوائم الفايرفوكس
مثلا تقوم بإخفاء امر ارسال صوره بالايميل من قائمة الزر الايمن
لتصبح القائمة اكثر تنظيماً وهكذا ,,,

الثاني عشر
Hide Menubar

اضافة رائعه لاحفاء شريط القوائم
و جعله لا يظهر الا عند ضغط الزر Alt من لوحة المفاتيح
مثل الانترنت اكسبلور 7 فى الفيستا

الثالث عشر
Office 2007 Black

ثيم اسود رائع جدا لجعل الفايرفوكس اكثر
جمالاً وأناقة

الرابع عشر

FEBE

اضافة مهمه جدا لحفظ كل الاضافات التى تستخدمها
والمفضلة وكلمات السر و ملفات تسجيل الدخول ” ****ز “
و اعدادات الفايرفوكس الى اى مجلد تختاره
لاعادتها وقت الحاجة !

What photo tagging applications can do to your Facebook profile

The culprit, as you may have guessed, are these Facebook applications that tag random images with your name and the tagged image therefore shows up in your Facebook profile page without you doing anything.

What’s the problem?

These “collages” not only make your Facebook profile look very unprofessional but there’s something else to worry about as well.

Some photo tagging applications on Facebook (as the one below) add links to bad sites in “your” photos and your innocent Facebook friends, who are just randomly browsing your pictures, might fall in the trap.

What can you do?

The simple way is that you remove your name tag from the tagged photo and it will be instantly removed from your Facebook photo album as well.

Next you should find the Facebook application that you friend used to create that photo collage in the first place and block that application forever so that your other friends are unable to use that application to spam your Facebook profile page.

Also make sure that you get notifications each time someone tags you in a photo. You can control this setting from the “Notifications” tab on the Account Settings page.

Photo tagging is the one of the most popular features on Facebook and, probably for this reason, Facebook doesn’t offer a simple setting that will prevent other users and applications from tagging you in photographs. You can however hide “photos tagged of you” from the privacy page so that the images don’t appear in your public photo albums and are visible only to you.

And as a precautionary measure, visit the authorized apps pages to make sure that you haven’t authorized any Facebook app to tag images of other people on your behalf. If you find one, just click the cross to remove that Facebook app from your profile permanently.

What can Facebook do?

When you are tagged in a photo by your friends (or a Facebook application), the tag is automatically approved and the picture appears in your profile. All we therefore need is an extra privacy setting that would let us to approve tags before a tagged photo appears on our profile page.

Facebook won’t let developers add apps to your profile without permission then why do they allow them to add pictures to your profile without asking.

For instance, you can now save articles on to your delicious account or send them to your Twitter stream in few clicks – select the Google Reader story that you want to share, press Shift + T (or click the “Send To” link with your mouse) and choose the social site where you want to send that story.

It’s that simple. Google Reader comes pre-loaded with links to some popular social services but if the one you use frequently is missing from that default list (e.g. Mister Wong, FriendFeed or even LinkedIn), add it manually from the settings page.

Create Your Own “Send To” Items for Google Reader

Tip #1: If you want to quickly save stories from Google Reader to your hard drive in PDF format, create a new custom link with the following settings:

Name: Save as PDF
URL: http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=${url}
Icon URL: http://www.adobe.com/lib/com.adobe/template/icon/pdf.gif

Tip #2: Dealing with Partial Feeds

When you use the “Email This” option inside Google Reader, the full text and images of that story are sent via email. This is great for full-text feeds but what do you do in the situation where the RSS publisher is syndicating only partial feeds? Well, here’s a workaround.

Name: Email This
URL: mailto:www@web2mail.com?subject=${url}
Icon URL: http://mail.google.com/favicon.ico

Now when you select “Email this” from the Send To menu, a request is sent to the web2mail service (see #0) – it will fetch the whole web page from the original URL and will send you the contents via email.

Tip #3: If you are planning to add multiple social sites to that Send To menu in Google Reader, wait. What you can do is add a link to any of your favorite social bookmarking widgets and that will give you access to almost every popular social site from the Google menu.

Here are the settings for addthis.com but you may even use addtoany.com or sharethis.com.

Name: Share This
URL: http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&url=${url}&title=${title}
Icon URL: http://shareicons.com/favicon.ico

Tip #4: Track related conversations

If you like to know how the web world has reacted to an article that you are currently reading inside Google Reader, add a new “Conversations” custom link with the following settings:

Name: Conversations
URL: http://backtweets.com/search?q=${url}
Icon URL: http://backtweets.com/favicon.ico

You may use a similar approach for tracking reactions in the blogosphere – replace BackTweets with either Technorati or Google Blog Search.

1. USB Cables and Connectors

What are USB cables used for – You can use USB cables to connect most new devices to your computer including flash memory sticks, portable media players, internet modems and digital cameras.

Computer accessories like mice, keyboards, webcams, portable hard-drives, microphones, printers, scanners and speakers can also be connected to the computer through USB ports. Additionally, USB cables are also used for charging a variety of gadgets including mobile phones or for transferring data from one computer to another.

How to recognize USB Cables – The standard USB connector, USB-A, is a rectangular connector. The USB-A end is present on every USB cable as it is the end that connects to your computer.

The other end of the USB cable may have different connectors including USB-B (a square connector commonly used with printers, external hard drives, and larger devices) or smaller connectors such as the Mini-USB and Micro-USB that are commonly used with portable devices such as media players and phones.

Additionally, many other connectors have USB-A connectors at the end that connects to the computer, and a device-specific connector at the other end (e.g. the iPod or a Zune). Then you have USB Male to Female connectors for extending the length of a USB cable.

Many other non-USB cables can also connect to your computer via a USB converter; these cables have the standard USB-A connector on one end while the other end could have connections for other ports such as Ethernet or audio.

2. Audio Cables and Connectors

2.1 – 3.5mm headphone jack

The most common audio cable is the standard headphone jack, otherwise known as a TSR connector. It is available in several sizes, but the most common ones used with computers are the 3.5 mm or 1/8″ mini audio jack.

Most speakers and microphones can connect to the computer with these audio cables. The microphone port on your computer is usually pink while the speaker port, where you insert the stereo audio cable, is colored green. Some computers have additional TSR audio ports colored black, grey, and gold; these are for rear, front, and center/subwoofer output, respectively.

A larger variety of the TSR connector, 1/4″ TRS, is commonly used in professional audio recording equipment and it can be connected to a computer using an 1/4″ to 1/8″ converter (pictured right).

2.2 – Digital Optical Audio

For high-end audio, like when you want to connect the output of a DVD player or a set-top box to a Dolby home theater, you need the TOSLINK (or S/PDIF) connector.

These are fiber optic cables and can therefore transmit pure digital audio through light. Some laptops and audio equipment have a mini-TOSLINK jack but you can use a converter to connect it to a standard TOSLINK (Toshiba Link) port.

3. Video Cables

3.1 – VGA

One of the most common video connectors for computer monitors and high-definition TVs is the VGA cable. A standard VGA connector has 15-pins and other than connecting a computer to a monitor, you may also use a VGA cable to connect your laptop to a TV screen or a projector.

Converter cables are lso available to let VGA monitors connect to newer computers that only output HDMI or DVI signals. A smaller variant of VGA, Mini-VGA, is available on some laptops but with the help of a converter, you can connect any standard VGA monitor to a Mini-VGA port of your laptop.

Related: How to Connect your Laptop to a TV Set

3.2 – DVI Monitor Port

If you have purchased a computer in the recent past, chances are that it uses DVI instead of VGA. The new breed of “thin” laptops use the smaller variants of DVI like the Mini-DVI and Micro-DVI (first seen in MacBook Air).

A DVI cable has 29 pins, though some connectors may have less pins depending on their configuration. DVI’s video signal is compatible with HDMI, so a simple converter can allow a DVI monitor to receive input from an HDMI cable.

Additionally, DVI to VGA converters are also available for connect your new graphics card to old monitor that supports only VGA mode.

3.3 – S-Video

S-Video cables, otherwise known as Separate Video or Super Video cables, carry analog video signals and are commonly used for connecting DVD players, camcorders, older video consoles to the television.

Standard S-Video connectors are round in shape and may have anywhere between 4-9 pins.

4. Audio and Video Cables

4.1 – RCA Connector Cables

RCA connector cables are a bundle of 2-3 cables including Composite Video (colored yellow) and Stereo Audio cables (red for right channel and white or black for the left audio channel).

Sometimes additional cables may be included, offering additional audio channels and/or component video instead of composite. Component video offers better picture than composite because the video signal is split in different signals while in the case of composite, everything is transferred through a single yellow plug.

Uses of RCA Connectors – The RCA cables are usually used for connecting your DVD player, stereo speakers, digital camera and other audio/video equipment to your TV. You can plug-in an RCA cable to the computer via a video capture card and this will let you transfer video from an old analog camcorder into your computer’s hard drive.

4.2 – HDMI Cables

HDMI is the new standard that provide both audio and video transmission through a single cable. HDMI support a maximum resolution of 4096×2160p (HD is only 1920×1200) with up to 8 channels of digital audio and are used for connecting Blu-Ray players to an HDTV.

Standard HDMI cables can be up to 5 meters long, but higher quality ones can be up to 15 meters long, and the length can be further increased with amplifiers. HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI so you can use a converter to watch video on a DVI device through the HDMI cable though you will have to use another cable for the audio.

4.3 – DisplayPort

A combined digital video and audio cable that is more commonly used in computers is DisplayPort and the smaller derivative Mini DisplayPort. Both support resolutions up to 2560 × 1600 × 60 Hz, and additionally support up to 8 channels of digital audio.

Mini DisplayPort connector is currently used in MacBooks but we could them in other computers as well in the near future.

Standard DisplayPort cables can be up to 3 meters long, but at a lower resolution cables can be up to 15 meters long.  DisplayPort connectors are available to connect VGA, DVI video, or HDMI video and audio with a DisplayPort cable or connection.  Additionally, converters are available to convert Mini DisplayPort into standard DisplayPort.

5. Data Cables

5.1 – Firewire IEEE 1394

Firewire, otherwise known as IEEE 1394, i.LINK, or Lynx, is a faster alternate to USB and is commonly used for connecting digital camcorders and external hard drives to a computer. It is also possible to ad-hoc network computers without a router over FireWire.

Firewire typically has 6 pins in its connector, though a 4 pin variety is common as well.

5.2 – eSATA Cables

While SATA cables are used internally for connecting the hard drive to the computer’s motherboard, eSATA cables are designed for portable hard drives, and can transfer data faster than USB or FireWire.

However, the eSATA cable cannot transmit power, so unlike USB, you cannot power an external hard drive with eSATA. The eSATA cable is somewhat different from the internal SATA cable; it has more shielding, and sports a larger connector.

6. Networking Related Cables

6.1 – Phone RJ11 Cable

The telephone cable, otherwise known as RJ11, is still used around the world for connecting to the Internet through DSL/ADSL modems. A standard phone cable has 4 wires and the connector has four pins.

The connector has a clip at the top to help maintain a tight connection.

6.2 – Ethernet Cable

Ethernet is the standard for wired networking around the world. The Ethernet cable, otherwise known as RJ45, is based on Cat5 twisted pair cable and is made from 8 individual wires.

The Ethernet connector, likewise, has 8 pins and looks similar to a phone plug, but is actually thicker and wider. It too has a clip to help maintain a tight connection like a phone connector.

Virtualization, in simple English, is a interesting technology that helps you run multiple operating systems on the same machine.

For instance, if you are running Windows Vista on a computer, you can create virtual machines for Windows XP or Ubuntu and run these operating systems on your existing Vista machine just like any other Windows application.

How to Create a Virtual Machine

Windows Virtual PC, Virtual Box and VMware Workstation are some popular applications that allow you to create new virtual machines on a Windows PC but the only problem with these programs is that they require you do everything from scratch.

That is, if you want to create a new virtual machine, you will have to install the whole operating system first using the original installer DVD and then configure it with your favorite programs. This can be both time consuming and difficult.

What if you could use your existing Windows computer, that already has all your favorite programs installed, and turn into a virtual machine?

Convert your Computer into a Virtual Machine

While it has always been possible to convert an existing hard drive into a virtual machine, the process was difficult and often required expensive programs.

Well, not anymore. There’s a new utility from Microsoft that makes it both simple and free to convert an existing installation of Windows into a virtual machine ready to run on any other computer.

Microsoft’s Sysinternals team has released a simple application called Disk2vhd, that lets you easily migrate an existing computer to a virtualized hard drive (VHD). It’s a tiny utility doesn’t even require instillation.

Create Virtual Hard Disks with Disk2VHD

When you run Disk2vhd, it will immediately show you all the drives and partitions on your computer that it can migrate to a VHD.  Simply select a drive that you wish to create a VHD file from and click “Create.” Disk2vhd will convert the hard drive into a VHD file even if the computer /drive is currently in use.

When the Virtual Machine VHD file is created, you can run it in any desktop virtualization program including the free Windows Virtual PC, Virtual Box, or VMware Player. You can also mount the virtual machine as a standard hard drive in Windows 7, and can even boot from it if your computer is running Windows 7 Ultimate.

You may use Disk2vhd to create virtual machines of your Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and higher machines, including x64 systems.

Usage Scenario

Let’s say you have a computer that is already running all the software programs you frequently use, but you now want to move to a new computer or upgrade your operating system. You can then consider creating a virtual machine of your old machine using the Microsoft utility and this will help you use all your favorite programs (with the same settings) on the new machine.

You can also use virtualization to create a ghost image of your hard drive in a single file and this will be handy in the event of a disk failure.

Disk2vhd is an useful tool that will make it much easier for you to enjoy the benefits of virtualization without being too technical.

Why PDF Files are Popular:

There are several reasons why PDF files are so popular for exchanging all sorts of documents including presentation portfolios, CAD Drawings, invoices and even legal forms.

#1. PDF files are generally more compact (smaller in size) than the source document and they easily preserve the original formatting. You can open a PDF file, that was created using a Windows PC, on a Mac or a Linux machine and your document will still look the same everywhere.

#2. Unlike Word and other popular document formats, the contents of a PDF file cannot be modified easily. You can also prevent other users from printing a physical copy of your PDF document.

#3. And the biggest advantage — you can view PDF files on almost any computer (or mobile phone) using the web browser or with the help of free software like Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Edit PDF Files with Free Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

While PDF Files are “read only” by default, there are ways by which you can edit certain elements* of a PDF document for free without requiring the source files or any of the commercial PDF editing tools.

[*] This article will primarily focus on tools that let you alter the actual contents of a PDF file. If you are looking to manipulate the PDF file structure itself like rearranging pages or merging multiple PDFs into one, please refer to the previous Adobe PDF Guide.

1. Online PDF Editor for Basic Tasks

There are situations when you need to make only minor changes in a PDF file. For instance, you want to hide your personal phone number from a PDF file before posting it on the web or want to annotate a page with sticky notes.

You can perform such edits pretty easily with PDF Escape, an online PDF editor that’s free and also lets you edit password-protected PDF documents in the browser.

With PDF Escape, you can hide* parts of a PDF file using the whiteout tool or add annotations with the help of custom shapes, arrows, text boxes and sticky notes. You can add hyperlinks to other PDF pages / web documents.

[*] Hiding is different from redaction because here we aren’t changing the associated metadata of a PDF file but just hiding certain parts of a PDF file by pasting an opaque rectangle over that region so that that stuff beneath the rectangle stays invisible.

2. Edit PDF Metadata (Author, PDF Title, etc.)

If you like to edit the meta-data associated* with a PDF document, check out Becy PDFMetaEdit. It’s a free utility that can help you edit details like the PDF document title, author name, creation data, keywords, etc. of any PDF file.

The tool can also be used for encrypting PDF documents such that only users who know the password can read the contents of your PDF files. And since this PDF metadata cum bookmarks editor can be executed from the command line, you can use it to update information in multiple PDF files in a batch.

[*] If you planning to post your PDF files on the web, you should consider adding proper metadata to all the files as that will help improve the organic rankings of your PDF files in Google search results.

3. Edit Text in a PDF File

If you want to edit large amounts of text in a PDF file but don’t have access to the source documents, your best bet is that you convert the PDF file into an editable Word document or an Excel spreadsheet depending on the contents of the PDF.

Then edit these converted PDFs in Microsoft Office (or Google Docs) and export the modified files back into PDF format.

If your PDF document is mostly text, you may use the desktop version of Stanza to convert that PDF into a Word document but if the document includes images, charts, tables and other complex formatting, try the online PDF to Word converter from BCL Research or the one from NitroPDF — the former offers instant conversion while the latter service can take up to a day though its yields more accurate results.

4. Advanced PDF Editing (Images, text, etc.)

Now that you know the basic tools, let’s look at another set of PDF editors that are again free but can help you do some more advanced editing with PDF documents. This refers to stuff like replacing images on a PDF file, adding signatures, removing blocks of text without breaking the flow of the document, etc.

PDF XChange is a free PDF viewer cum editor that you may use for typing text directly on any PDF page. PDF XChange also supports image stamps so you may use the tool for signing a PDF file or for inserting images anywhere on a PDF page.

Then you have Inkscape, a free vector drawing tool (like Adobe Illustrator) that can natively import and export PDF content.

Video Demo: Edit PDF Files with Inkscape

With Inkscape, you can select any object on a PDF page (including text, graphics, tables, etc.) and move them to a different location or even remove them permanently from the PDF file. You can also annotate PDF files with Inkscape or draw freehand on a page using the built-in pencil tool.

The next tool in the category of advanced PDF editors is OpenOffice Draw with the PDFImport extension. OpenOffice Draw supports inline editing so you can easily fix typos in a PDF document or make formatting related changes like replacing color, increasing or decreasing the text size, replacing the default font-family, etc.

Like Inkscape, the OpenOffice toolbox also includes support for annotations, shapes, images, tables, charts, etc. but here you have more choices and the software also looks less complex.

The OpenOffice suite is a little bulky (they don’t provide a standalone installer for Draw) but if you have the bandwidth, OpenOffice is the best tool for manipulating PDF documents when you don’t have the budget for Adobe Acrobat.

Wireless Networking (Wi-Fi) has made it so easy for you to use the computer, portable media player, mobile phones, video game consoles, and other wireless devices anywhere in the house without the clutter of cables.

With traditional wired networks, it is extremely difficult for someone to steal your bandwidth but the big problem with wireless signals is that others can access the Internet using your broadband connection even while they are in a neighboring building or sitting in a car that’s parked outside your apartment.

This practice, also known as piggybacking, is bad for three reasons:

• It will increase your monthly Internet bill especially when you have to pay per byte of data transfer.
• It will decrease your Internet access speed since you are now sharing the same internet connection with other users.
• It can create a security hazard* as others may hack your computers and access your personal files through your own wireless network.

[*] What do the bad guys use - There have been quite a few instances where innocent Internet users have been arrested for sending hate emails when in reality, their email accounts where hacked though the unsecured Wi-Fi networks that they had at home. Wireshark is a free packet sniffing tool for Linux, Mac and Windows that can scan traffic flowing though a wireless network including cookies, forms and other HTTP requests.

How to Secure Your Wireless Network

The good news is that it is not very hard to make your wireless network secure, which will both prevent others from stealing your internet and will also prevent hackers from taking control of your computers through your own wireless network.

Here a few simple things that you should to secure your wireless network:

Step 1. Open your router settings page

First, you need to know how to access your wireless router’s settings. Usually you can do this by typing in “192.168.1.1” into your web browser, and then enter the correct user name and password for the router. This is different for each router, so first check your router’s user manual.

You can also use Google to find the manuals for most routers online in case you lost the printed manual that came with your router purchase. For your reference, here are direct links to the manufacturer’s site of some popular router brands – Linksys, Cisco, Netgear, Apple AirPort, SMC, D-Link, Buffalo, TP-LINK, 3Com, Belkin.

Step 2. Create a unique password on your router

Once you have logged into your router, the first thing you should do to secure your network is to change the default password* of the router to something more secure.

This will prevent others from accessing the router and you can easily maintain the security settings that you want. You can change the password from the Administration settings on your router’s settings page. The default values are generally admin / password.

[*] What do the bad guys use - This is a public database of default usernames and passwords of wireless routers, modems, switches and other networking equipment. For instance, anyone can easily make out from the database that the factory-default settings for Linksys equipment can be accessed by using admin for both username and password fields.

Step 3. Change your Network’s SSID name

The SSID (or Wireless Network Name) of your Wireless Router is usually pre-defined as “default” or is set as the brand name of the router (e.g., linksys). Although this will not make your network inherently* more secure, changing the SSID name of your network is a good idea as it will make it more obvious for others to know which network they are connecting to.

This setting is usually under the basic wireless settings in your router’s settings page. Once this is set, you will always be sure that you are connecting to the correct Wireless network even if there are multiple wireless networks in your area. Don’t use your name, home address or other personal information in the SSID name.

[*] What do the bad guys use - Wi-Fi scanning tools like inSSIDer (Windows) and Kismet (Mac, Linux) are free and they will allow anyone to find all the available Wireless Networks in an area even if the routers are not broadcasting their SSID name.

Step 4. Enable Network Encryption

In order to prevent other computers in the area from using your internet connection, you need to encrypt your wireless signals.

There are several encryption methods for wireless settings, including WEP, WPA (WPA-Personal), and WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2). WEP is basic encryption and therefore least secure (i.e., it can be easily cracked*, but is compatible with a wide range of devices including older hardware, whereas WPA2 is the most secure but is only compatible with hardware manufactured since 2006.

To enable encryption on your Wireless network, open the wireless security settings on your router’s configuration page. This will usually let you select which security method you wish to choose; if you have older devices, choose WEP, otherwise go with WPA2. Enter a passphrase to access the network; make sure to set this to something that would be difficult for others to guess, and consider using a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters in the passphrase.

[*] What do the bad guys use - AirCrack and coWPAtty are some free tools that allow even non-hackers to crack the WEP / WPA (PSK) keys using dictionary or brute force techniques. A video on YouTube suggests that AirCrack may be easily used to break WiFi encryption using a jail-broken iPhone or an iPod Touch.

Step 5. Filter MAC addresses

Whether you have a laptop or a Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, all your wireless devices have a unique MAC address (this has nothing to do with an Apple Mac) just like every computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address. For an added layer of protection, you can add the MAC addresses of all your devices to your wireless router’s settings so that only the specified devices can connect to your Wi-Fi network.

MAC addresses are hard-coded into your networking equipment, so one address will only let that one device on the network. It is, unfortunately, possible to spoof a MAC address*, but an attacker must first know one of the MAC addresses of the computers that are connected to your Wireless network before he can attempt spoofing.

To enable MAC address filtering, first make a list of all your hardware devices that you want to connect to your wireless network**. Find their MAC addresses, and then add them to the MAC address filtering in your router’s administrative settings. You can find the MAC address for your computers by opening Command Prompt and typing in “ipconfig /all”, which will show your MAC address beside the name “Physical Address”. You can find the MAC addresses of Wireless mobile phones and other portable devices under their network settings, though this will vary for each device.

[*] What do the bad guys use - Someone can change the MAC address of his or her own computer and can easily connect to your network since your network allows connection from devices that have that particular MAC address. Anyone can determine the MAC address of your device wireless using a sniffing tool like Nmap and he can then change the MAC address of his own computer using another free tool like MAC Shift.

Step 6. Reduce the Range of the Wireless Signal

If your wireless router has a high range but you are staying in a small studio apartment, you can consider decreasing the signal range by either changing the mode of your router to 802.11g (instead of 802.11n or 802.11b) or use a different wireless channel.

You can also try placing the router under the bed, inside a shoe box or wrap a foil around the router antennas so that you can somewhat restrict the direction of signals.

Apply the Anti-Wi-Fi Paint – Researchers have developed a special Wi-Fi blocking paint that can help you stop neighbors from accessing your home network without you having to set up encryption at the router level. The paint contains chemicals that blocks radio signals by absorbing them. “By coating an entire room, Wi-Fi signals can’t get in and, crucially, can’t get out.”

Step 7. Upgrade your Router’s firmware

You should check the manufacturer’s site occasionally to make sure that your router is running the latest firmware. You can find the existing firmware version of your router using from the router’s dashboard at 192.168.*.

Connect to your Secure Wireless Network

To conclude, MAC Address filtering with WPA2 (AES) encryption (and a really complex passphrase) is probably the best way to secure your wireless network.

Once you have enabled the various security settings in your wireless router, you need to add the new settings to your computers and other wireless devices so that they all can connect to the Wi-Fi network. You can select to have your computer automatically connect to this network, so you won’t have to enter the SSID, passphrase and  other information every time you connect to the Internet.

Your wireless network will now be a lot more secure and intruders may have a tough time intercepting your Wi-Fi signals.

Who is Connected to your Wireless Network

If you are worried that an outsider may be connecting to the Internet using your Wireless network, try AirSnare – it’s a free utility that will look for unexpected MAC addresses on your Wireless network as well as to DHCP requests. Another option is that you open your router’s administration page (using the 192.168.* address) and look for the DHCP Clients Table (it’s under Status > Local Network on Linksys routers). Here you will see a list of all computers and wireless devices that are connected to your home network.

*It is also a good idea to turn off the router completely when you are not planning to use the computer for a longer period (like when you are out shopping). You save on electricity and the door remains 100% shut for wireless piggybackers.

**If you ever want to let a new device connect to your network, you will have to find its MAC address and add it to your router. If you simple want to let a friend connect to your wireless network one time, you can remove his MAC address from the router settings when he or she leaves your place.

Now while the website policy clearly states that they “won’t sell your email address to third-parties,” you aren’t feeling very comfortable sharing your private email address with a website that you’ve never heard about before. What do you do then?

Do you plan to skip the offer just because you’re worried that spam might hit your email Inbox? Well, stop worrying and get a disposable email address that will auto-expire after some hours (or some days).

There are quite a few websites that offer disposable email addresses for free but my favorite is 10minutemail.com. Just visit the and you’ll get a temporary email address that you can use anywhere on the web just like your regular email address (you can even reply and forward message).

The email addresses will self-destruct after, you guessed it right, 10 minutes. They regularly switch their email server domains – you might have been allotted abc@hello.com today but the alias next day could become xyz@bye.com. This prevents forum administrators from blocking members that use temporary addresses.

When Disposable Email Addresses Aren’t Enough..

You may use disposable email addresses when filling out online surveys, registration forms, comment forms, etc. but when you need to share your email address on a public website (like Twitter), disposable addresses won’t help as they expire pretty soon.

You still have a couple of options though.

Scr.im will convert your email address into a short web address (URL). People will have to pass a small CAPTCHA test to see your actual email address (see example).

Another service that can potentially save your email from spammers is reCAPTCHA. The service will require “human” users to solve a CAPTCHA for them to see your full email address in plain text. Here’s a demo:

Please click here to reveal the full email address.

Spambox.us will let you generate temporary email addresses that can last up to an year. Any email message that’s sent to this temporary address will be auto-forwarded to your main Inbox and, if you think you are getting spammed, you can simply cancel your Spambox address.

Then you have whspr.me that turns email address into a web forms. Anyone can reach you over email by simply writing the message in this form. You can delete the email form manually anytime or set it to auto-expire after ‘n’ days.

If you have a Google Account, you can check the setting in your Google Profile that says – “allow people to contact me without showing my email address”. Other users who are logged into their Google Accounts can then send you direct messages – see the “send a message” link in my Google profile for a live example.

And finally the most common method – you can consider creating an image of your email address using labelgen (or even Facebook). Most spam bots won’t notice your email address while humans can easily read the address without having to solve complex CAPTCHAs.

Email Cover can also help you mask your precious email address but, unlike regular email to image converters, it doesn’t use straight fonts so your address will possibly stay protected from spammers who are smart enough to perform OCR. See example: